A Comparative Study Between Ancient Mesopotamian And Biblical Creation Myths

Creation myth, as one of the indispensable parts of myth system, has always been attracting wide attention because of its mysterious features. Different countries, regions and nations throughout the world all contain their own creation myth to explain the origin of the world and their nation. Furthermore, if we study carefully creation myths of different systems, we will easily find out that creation myths from different regions all have similarities, only differing in degree.At present, our society is highly developed. Therefore, it seems especially important to have some knowledge of our human being development history. No matter which country, nation or region's history and culture we study, myths, especially creation myths, are very important valuable materials. By studying local creation myth, we can know the life style, religious belief and society developing conditions of our ancient ancestors.The ancient Mesopotamian civilization, which can be traced back to over four thousand years B.C., has always been regarded as the origin of human civilization. Bible, as the classical masterpiece of Christian religion, is the widely-accepted origin of the whole European civilization and has permeated into every corner of today's Eurpoean life. Complete system of creation myths exist in both civilizations. The former takes Sumerian and Babylonian myth as representatives; while the latter mainly exists in the Hebrew classical masterpiece Bible. After comparing the ancient Mesopotamian and Biblical creation myths, we can find out a lot of similarities. Through comparing the above two, we can not only cleary know the succession and innovation existed in the creation myth system of these two areas, but also have better understanding of separate society developing conditions and the exchange of politics, economics, culture and military affairs between these two areas.Therefore, this thesis will first compare the similarities between ancient Mesopotamian and Biblical creation myths according to its classification and carefully analyze the reasons causing so many similarities exist. After that, these two kinds of creation myth will be further contrasted, with the purpose of finding out its differences and revealing the reasons resulting these differences.